Blocks, buster.

[digitaldiscipline]

I'm used to employing a rather large lump of NaCl when poring over Chuck Taylor's screeds - we hold wildly divergent opinions of what is (and is not) entertaining.

Page One of his latest was no different, but the subsequent three pages found me grudgingly agreeing with some of what he had to say.

However, it's that disagreement that lingers; after watching "Hellboy" (which we enjoyed), one of the first conversations my girlfriend and I shared on the drive home was along the lines of "Those previews [for "Day After Tomorrow," "Troy," "Van Helsing," "King Arthur," and, regrettably, "White Chicks"] look -really- good. I wonder if Hollywood has been sitting on all these good-looking movies, waiting for "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrices" franchises to leave the stage so they wouldn't be relegated to #2?"

"Van Helsing" was a confused, overloud mess [http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/93639.html], despite the potential for eye candy, and a big disappointment. I've heard shockingly good things about "Troy" from history buffs, albeit under the heading of "This was so far removed from Homer that I had to watch it like it was a different story altogether."

I'm looking forward to "Day After Tomorrow" as a visual effects experience first, and if there's actually a plot that's anything above utterly stupid, I'll consider it a pleasant surprise.

Daily life requires us to invest our intellects and emotions in what happens. Just because it offends your higher sensibilities, don't begrudge some of us our decision to just see something that's impressive and cool.

The fact that I think Manhattan would be vastly improved by a hundred feet of frost and that Los Angeles needs a nice tornadic enema is just the icing on the cake.

Comments

Troy in 15 minutes (language NSFW)

[jmoriarty.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/99710.html

Re: Troy in 15 minutes (language NSFW)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

"dude. cousins."

[rat-bastard.livejournal.com]

Oh C'mon, King Arthur looks like it will be a fat steaming turd. :P

[etcet.livejournal.com]

But it'll be an entertaining turd. Like, with corn and stuff.

[jruske.livejournal.com]

I liked Van Helsing. I thought it was an excellent combination of mind-numbing action film and brilliant costumes without binging on blatant poor specific effects.

Of course I'm sure my expectations were not set too high - after all I think the movie most prominent in my mind for comparison's sake was Underworld (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320691/) which I thought was more a TV movie than anything else.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Yanno, Joe, you baffle me sometimes.

I mean, VH was entertaining enough, at least when Dracula and his brides weren't devouring the scenery with their awful acting and worse accents. . . ["I have no feelings, but I am very obviously angry! And I can laugh at things, like my brides' fear!"]. . . but too much CGI, too many decibels, and, what, exactly, was the deal with the killer tadpoles supposed to be about?

[ashbet]

I'm just pissed-off, because the *weaponry* looks awesome, but I can't sit through that much crap CG without attacking the screen with a meat cleaver . . . dammit, I *wanted* that movie to be good!!

-- A, who is an OldSkool Effects Junkie, and if there ain't no puppetry and K-Y slime, I'm not going to see the film!!

[jruske.livejournal.com]

Yanno, Joe, you baffle me sometimes.

I struggle with the idea that baffling people is particularly difficult. In what particular way did you mean?

at least when Dracula and his brides weren't devouring the scenery with their awful acting and worse accents

OH! You went to see a pop culture action film for the strong character acting! Well, in that case, you may have been a bit disappointed by the realistic Frankenstein ("Hey I live in a cave eating rats and humans but I've developed the morality of a saint.") and the overwhelming portrayal of gypsies as lunatics with no fear ("Whose got the werewolf? I've got the werewolf. Oooops!").

chuckle

Action flicks, despite the term action's inclusion of the letters, do not depend on acting.

but too much CGI

Actually this is a grey area for me. There were several times when I felt like I was watching a super super hi-rez video game. And wished video games I had were done as well. Other times the CGI really was very subtle and hardly noticeable in and of itself.

too many decibels

I've found that different cinemas playback sound levels differently. I could see how a cinema that cranked up the sound would blast you out of your seats. That's not the experience we had though.

was the deal with the killer tadpoles supposed to be about

At least it didn't sink into how evil the roman church is, etc, etc, etc. There were plenty of opportunities for such a digression, and I was pleasantly surprised the ending was what it was.

As for the flying imp wankers... well... as you noted, the brides of Dracula just were too darn silly and vamp-ish (in a breasty way) to provide true threating villany. So it was left up to their progeny, I guess.

I don't know. Seemed like good fun to me.

I still would have rathered a full anime movie based on the anime Hellsing series (http://www.absoluteanime.com/hellsing/). In fact, those characters would have been much more enjoyable than the ripped off League of Extraordinary Gentlemen characters. But I definitely rank this movie higher than Underworld. Albeit for outright adventure I lean toward Hellboy a bit more - but that's cause it was creepy and devious and I love pulp occult stuff.

Even when its hollywood-ized.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

The bafflement came from this skewed view I hold of you being staid and sensible. The fact that you look like my dad doesn't even scuff this, and I -know- he's weird. ;-)

I don't require strong acting, but, by the same token, I want something at least on a par with the voice acting in most video games, not the incedibly hammy B-movie efforts put forth by, well, everyone but Faramir.

Let me clarify my gripe re: the CGI.

I'm all for good special effects. These simply weren't. When you meld CGI with live-action, IMNSHO, it should be on a par with the live action [Independence Day, Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park. . . heck, even Starship Troopers], or be very obviously animated [Who Framed Roger Rabbit].... when it is almost, but not quite, realistic, you end up with the suspension of disbelief being slapped out from the precarious position it was put in by the lousy dialogue [even a good actor reciting a horrible script can't save it, and this -was- a horrible script].

I would agree that it looked like a video game in that it was choppy, hyperactive, and barely credible. . . those are good things to have when you're playing Quake, not so much when you're trying to do anything marginally more credible.

I still don't know why they needed to make guppies. I'd have gladly boinked two out of the three brides, or done whatever it was. . . as long as they'd shut up while I was doing it. Heh.

It was campy, it was silly, but it was still not as good as it could have been. Much like Nicholson/Pfeiffer's hack at lycanthropy, "Wolf" - it -could- have been a good movie, and seemed to want to, but it missed by just enough to be cheese, albeit pretty well-produced cheese.

[jruske.livejournal.com]

The bafflement came from this skewed view I hold of you being staid and sensible. The fact that you look like my dad doesn't even scuff this, and I -know- he's weird. ;-)

Hmmmmph.

That'll cost you a wedgie next time I see you having a good time, hirsuite boy. :>

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Van Helsing: Probably the funniest movie I've seen in about two years. Anyone that walked out in the first hour would probably feel that they'd horribly wasted an hour and $8.00, but that was the point at which I realized the whole thing was nothing short of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Farce" and started revelling in every cheesy moment. As an understated comedy with pretty outfits, it was glorious. But then, I liked LXG as well, so my insanity is well-evidenced.

Day After Tomorrow, in spite of the preview looking good, and the one shot of a glacial Manhattan, looks like it won't redeem stretching my credibility that far. I keep looking at it and hoping it's an adaptation of Larry Niven's Fallen Angels (A couple of astronauts are forced back from their space station to an Earth barely holding on to the last vestiages of civilization locked in an encroaching Ice Age, and must be smuggled to safe haven by a bunch of SF fans and con-goers), but frankly it looks like someone just said "Disaster movies worked once; how many can we stick in this thing?"

Troy? Dunno. The assessment above of "Way cool historically, if you forget Homer wrote anything about it" seems pretty likely to sum it up well. I liked watching Gladiator without caring one whit about the plot because it was a cool film about Romans that made stab at getting the culture kind of close, so I'll probably enjoy Troy on the same level.

[ashbet]

Did you read my review of 'Troy'? ;>

-- A, who is probably the only chick in the audience who went there to see Greek Fire in action . . . dammit!!